Some Thoughts on the Nature of “Tragedy”

Stock photo of the Titanic wreckage

I avoided writing about the OceanGate Titan, the submersible that vanished while gawking at the wreck of the Titanic, while there was hope of rescue. Since it disappeared on Sunday, social media has been flooded with dollar-store schadenfreude mocking the passengers’ entitled hubris to treat the remote, and still poorly explored, wreck as a tourist attraction. But at this writing, oxygen reserves have run out, the vessel is probably lost, and the tone has shifted.

By Thursday morning (really Wednesday evening), reactions bifurcated. Some observers, perhaps motivated by the parallels between this event and the original Titanic sinking, began describing this event as a tragedy. Behind them, a rising tide of dissidents reminded audiences that an overloaded migrant vessel sank last week, potentially dragging over 600 impoverished Libyan refugees to the deepest part of the Mediterranean. Why, dissenters asked, isn’t this the real tragedy, not the submarine full of CEOs?

This debate reflects not only the priorities driving the 24-hour news cycle, but the way words drift over time. Mass media slings the word “tragedy” around so heedlessly that it’s come unmoored from its Greek roots. Aristotle defined tragedy as a theatrical form in which the protagonist is destroyed, not by bad luck or circumstance, but by the consequences of his (and indeed usually “his”) own actions. Then the horrified audience feels pity for him.

For Aristotle, the defining tragedy was Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. You probably know the broad outlines, even if you haven’t read it or seen it performed. Oedipus, king of Thebes, promises to root out the cause of the curse plaguing his city. The prophet Tieresias promises Oedipus he won’t like the answer, but Oedipus persists. Following a detective-like investigation, he discovers that he caused the curse himself, and he’s already living out the morally horrific consequences.

Many modern writers forget tragedy’s most important point: Oedipus brought these consequences upon himself. On at least four occasions, the play’s suffering and bloodshed could’ve been avoided if Oedipus or his forebears had listened to advice. In this regard, the OceanGate Titan catastrophe is indeed tragic. Deliberate disregard for safety protocols, and the belief that money insulates rich people from calamity, led three CEOs, a teenager, and a technical crew to their almost-certain watery graves.

PR photo of the OceanGate Titan submersible

And the narrative induces horror and pity. If the passengers and crew weren’t killed instantly, the conditions of their now-likely deaths sound horrific. Trapped in a claustrophobic submersible, undoubtedly wearing urine-soaked clothes, and being slowly suffocated, this disaster has robbed them not only of their lives, but also their dignity, and even a marked grave. Like Oedipus, they arguably deserve their fate for rubbernecking at a mass grave, but their deaths are still pretty piteous.

Edit: after I wrote this essay, the U.S. Coast Guard announced they had identified the remains of the OceanGate Titan. It appears the submersible suffered a rapid structural implosion, and the passengers were, indeed, killed instantly.

Okay, but if the OceanGate Titan is a legitimate tragedy, doesn’t that describe the Libyan refugee ship? The hundreds of deaths are both horrific and piteous. Yet I’d contend they aren’t tragic, for one reason: there wasn’t much anybody aboard that vessel could’ve done. Their choices were limited to remaining in Libya, which has been anarchic and violent since the Obama Administration’s reckless intervention in the overthrow of Moammar Gadhaffi, or risk death at sea.

Oedipus, King Lear, and Jay Gatsby are tragic heroes, not only because they died horrifically, but because they’re responsible for their own deaths. Any of them could have, at any time, stopped events from happening. They perhaps didn’t realize the agency they possessed, but each one made choices which led directly to their own downfalls. If the captain of the refugee vessel misled refugees onto his boat, causing it to sink, that would be tragedy.

Aristotle believed that only kings, generals, and potentates had enough power to be responsible for their own deaths. I disagree. I’ve recently become a fan of horror fiction, and novels like Ania Ahlborn’s Brother and Catriona Ward’s The Last House on Needless Street probably count as contemporary Aristotelian tragedies. In both books, at least one character could’ve prevented catastrophe by asking questions, listening to advice, or not going with the flow like a dead fish.

So yes, on balance, I’d say the OceanGate Titan catastrophe is a tragedy. It meets Aristotle’s standards not only of narrative structure, but of audience reaction. We are, indeed, suitably horrified and pitying. The only question remains: will we learn anything? Will we respect safety standards, shake the illusion that money deflects consequences, and the dead aren’t for gawking at? Only time will tell. At least we can start reclaiming the definition of a “tragedy.”